


Him Again

by aquawrites



Category: No Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25169704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquawrites/pseuds/aquawrites
Summary: It’s that feeling again. The heavy feeling of lead being cemented into my arms and legs, losing my sense of whether they were mine or someone else’s. The sharp squeezing in my chest, the one that takes my breath away and makes me see stars in my eyes. This feeling’s presence feels so familiar as if I’ve been feeling this way since childhood. But it’s not familiar, it’s totally and completely new. The twitching I feel at my fingertips is new to me, but this burning feeling on my face, centering around my cheeks, wasn’t.





	1. Prologue

It’s that feeling again. The heavy feeling of lead being cemented into my arms and legs, losing my sense of whether they were mine or someone else’s. The sharp squeezing in my chest, the one that takes my breath away and makes me see stars in my eyes. This feeling’s presence feels so familiar as if I’ve been feeling this way since childhood. But it’s not familiar, it’s totally and completely new. The twitching I feel at my fingertips is new to me, but this burning feeling on my face, centering around my cheeks, wasn’t.

What kind of spell does he cast on me each time we meet? Or even if I just catch a glimpse of him across the room, filled with many other people? How is he able to make my vision immediately tunnel in his direction as soon as he walks through the door? It’s like he’s controlling my mind like he has a tight grip on my subconscious and puppets me around however he wants. Just looking at him makes my mind go blank, words stopping on the tip of my tongue, my sight goes blurry all except where he is, so he is completely clear and I can see the man who is controlling me in such a way. He makes me feel warm and cold all at once. Just one sound from him sends a shudder that I feel from the top of my neck down to the tips of my toes. A beat that originates from my chest resonates throughout my body and suddenly that’s all I hear. Until he shifts his eyes to look at me. That’s when that loud pounding stops, dead in its tracks, like a deer in headlights.

He must have most certainly put me under a spell. What other explanation excuses these feelings at even the slightest thought of him. Am I sick? Could that explain it? I don’t know what can explain how I can’t function when he’s around. What could explain how, when he looks near me, I want to tuck my hair behind my ear but hide my face behind my bangs at the same time? I want to look away from him, to stop whatever this feeling is, but I want to continue looking and savor the warm and light feeling in my chest as long as I can, drag out this feeling as long as he will allow me. I want to laugh, some type of laugh that’s loud, to get his attention, or something small, that may draw his magical eyes towards me, subtle-like, but I don’t want him to look at me and heat me from the inside out, roasting me with just the smallest stare, looking like he can pick apart my brain and know exactly what I’m feeling and thinking in an instant.

Why did I have to start feeling like this? What have I done to have this feeling plaguing me day in, day out, and floating in my head at the worst possible times? I used to know him as a dork, I used to say that he was the most unattractive, nerdy, boisterous boy with braces and freckles that I’ve ever known. But then he started acting differently. Immediately following the summer of our eighth-grade year, finally becoming high schoolers, he struts into the school like he owns the place and simultaneously knocks the breath out of everyone in his general vicinity. He’d grown taller, become tanner, lost his braces, embraced the constellation of freckles across his cheeks and nose, and strode through the halls, stealing everyone’s attention with confidence, ease, and with his chin held high. Would I go back to normal if he went back as well?

I want to be able to go back to the way it was when we were friends and goofing around with each other. Not having to feel the need to check my face for any food or look down at my clothes and make sure that my outfit looks good and I look good. I wish we would be able to go back to feeling like we could tell each other our biggest secrets and know that the other wouldn’t even think of whispering a word of it to someone else. But we can’t go back. Its senior year now, he and I have drifted apart sometime mid-freshman year, and now I have a feeling that I can’t quite explain and don’t know how to get rid of or if I even want to get rid of it. The way it makes me feel makes it too hard for me to say that I want out. And maybe, just maybe, I want to keep this feeling, for real, and let it build-up and keep me feeling this way for as long as possible. Because as much as it sometimes hurts me, embarrasses me, annoys me, and distracts me, above all else, it makes me happy and excited to wake up in the morning and makes me expect a great day. It makes me feel like I have a purpose that I’m doing and gets me up out of bed. It gives me the energy to get through life toughest points in my life, it makes me think and tell myself that it could be worse and helps me get through it.

I think, maybe, I want to be a little selfish and keep this feeling longer. Would that be wrong of me?


	2. Chapter 1

A very irritating ringing resonates around my room, bouncing on my walls, all in the name of dragging me from my haven of warm pillows and blankets. The damned machine doesn’t seem to understand that I want silence. Lifting my head like it weighs a million pounds, one last attempt to silence the alarm erupts from my throat as a grunt. When my plan doesn’t work as well as I hoped it would, I know I should have known it can’t hear me but I’m still half-asleep, I try cracking open an eye. But that plan immediately backfires when a bright light that breaks through the curtains covering my window blinds me and forces me to hiss aloud and hide under the safety of my many blankets stacked on me and my bed.

Although I am very obviously in pain, the alarm persists with its obnoxious blaring of the most annoying sound in the world, at least it is right now, when all I want is sleep.

Falling back onto my bed, I relish in the beautiful silence that I worked so hard for. That is until a voice yells from downstairs, telling me to wake up. Letting out another grunt, this one louder so that the invader of my silence hears, I heave my heavy, half-asleep body up and off the heaven of soft and warm blankets. I let out another displeased sound, hoping to push my mother towards the edge so she knows for sure that I'm not happy with being woken up, and grab my glasses from my bedside table, and put them on as I make my descent down the stairs towards the kitchen.

I plop myself down at the breakfast table. Almost immediately after, a plate of heart-shaped pancakes is laid in front of me, decorated with strawberries, blueberries, syrup, and powdered sugar. A hand ruffles my already messed up hair and the owner of that hand sits in the seat next to me with pancakes as well, but very noticeably not as prettied up.

"Happy Birthday, hun." Slight grogginess is hidden in her sunshine-like statement. Looking around, it's obvious that she's tried many times to get the pancakes to the point that they are. 

"Yeah, thanks, mom." Her face blushes bright red when she realizes that I took notice of all the failed attempts. She starts to shovel her breakfast into her mouth to hide her embarrassment and I take that as a sign to start eating as well. 

The first bite is all it took. Mom isn't that great of a cook. It's usually me cooking or ready-made food. The pancakes tasted pretty bad, so bad that I wanted to spit it out but something stopped me. Maybe it was her frizzy, brown hair trying to spill out of her ponytail or the dark circles under her eyes giving away that she's been up for hours just to give me the perfect birthday breakfast. My head shakes in my mind and I continue to eat.

I have to rush to get dressed and get to school. Usually, mom and I will only have toast and a nutrition bar for breakfast. So now I'm running further behind schedule. But I don't regret it. I grab a random shirt from my closet, it ended up being an LoZ one, and some jeans. I grab my phone, hoodie, and backpack and fly down the stairs. I reach out for the doorknob but my mom yells out at me to stop. 

I turn in her direction to see that her frizzy hair is now in a tight bun and her pajamas are now a business jacket, pencil skirt, and pantyhose. Once she reaches me, she stretches out her arms and combs through my shaggy hair. Ah, right, I knew I was forgetting something.

"Hun, you need to take care of yourself more." She pauses to chuckle. "I can give you a ride to the school on my way to work if you want?"

"Please." I breathe out with real and fake desperation. She looks at me like she's going to ruffle my hair again so I duck with both hands on my head and run outside away from the impending danger. 

We reach school way faster than I could have on foot. Mom lays her hand on my shoulder. I turn to her only to face her tear-filled eyes. "I love you." She manages to let out a shaky couple of words and breaks down. I know what this is. Every birthday, she finally realizes how old I've gotten and starts to cry. Her job as a lawyer doesn't allow her much free time so this has become routine for us.

"I love you, too, mom. No matter how old I get, that will never change."

She covers her mouth with both hands and nods her head while big, fat tears roll down her cheeks, one after another. "You'll always be my baby." She waves me off. I get out of the car and head on my way to the school looking back only once I get to the doors to see my mom try to wipe away the black streaks of makeup.


	3. Chapter 2

Opening the doors felt heavy, I wanted to go back to my mom. She was crying, I knew why and I wanted to comfort her but I also know that she never wants me to see her downtrodden. She wants me to know her as a strong woman, someone who has a stronghold on her life. What she doesn't know is that I see her cry. I've seen her at her worst when she thinks she's alone. She doesn't know that I get good grades because I want her to be proud of what she has accomplished raising me. But what I can't stop is how blue she gets every birthday I have. I know this one was solidifying her fears that I may up and leave her, now that I'm an adult. No matter how much I have tried to reassure her, I can't seem to change her mind in that regard.

Heaving the entrance to my high school open, I attempt to take everything in. A difficult job considering how packed tightly it was in the hallways. You would have to squeeze past people to get wherever you wanted. Like a pair of too-tight jeans, or the obvious comparison would be a can of sardines. 

I attempt the treacherous journey to my locker, trying to push my way through each and every little space I could find. As I was looking for the next space I could try to fit through, I ran into a wall. A hard, warm wall. A wall wearing clothes. I just ran into a person. Looking up, I hope my existence is sucked through a black hole at the speed of light. It was Thomas. Or Tom Train as I used to call him when we were kids. 

Thomas was, or is my childhood crush. Every year after I realized that I liked him, my feelings only continued to grow. I don't like using the word love but I think I'm getting close to feeling that towards him. Him with his plain brown hair and eyes, him with his unfairly straight teeth with no need for braces, him with his charismatic personality. And him, my own childhood friend with whom I've lost contact. As my crush grew, I regrettably had pulled away from him. Especially when he had girlfriends, I felt too awkward liking him in that way and I felt like I was taking advantage of him because we used to hang out all the time and just be with each other in our rooms. I sometimes talked with him again when he broke up with his girlfriends because it would feel less of a delicate situation. Looking back on it, it looks horrible from his perspective. And I regret it, even more, every day I think about it. 

Upon meeting gazes, his small grin already planted on his lips suddenly widened, brightening his entire face. "Tai Tai!" Immediately, his arms wrapped themselves around my body, picking me up slightly. "I haven't seen you in forever! How's mom?" That's how we would refer to each other's parents. I would speak about his parents like they were my own parents and he would do the same with my mom. 

"She's doing just fine, maybe a little shaken up because I'm eighteen already."

"Oh yeah," he proclaims excitedly, "today's your birthday, isn't it? Happy birthday, Tai Tai!" 

"Yep," I say, popping the p, "and you think you're so slick, acting like you forgot it was my birthday. I know for a fact that you have three alarms set on your phone to remind you and that it's circled on your calendar with a big red marker." He had been doing that since we were kids, birthdays were big things in the Hall family. They would take a whole week around a birthday and celebrate the birthday person the entire time. He was a forgetful guy so he would circle birthdays multiple times with a red marker so it would stand out. As soon as he got a phone, he set ten alarms for birthdays. I'm the saint who talked him down to three. He only does both of these things for his immediate family and mine. 

Laughing jovially, his chest pushing into me with every inhale and exhale, he replied, "You sure like to call me out on my bs, don't you?"

"It's the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning." I jokingly prodded. Poking at his ticklish spot on his shoulder until he let me go. 

"So where are you headed, Tailor the Magnificent?" Another joke we would do as kids. We liked to play royalty, that was my name and his appointed name was Thomas the Great.

"Well, peasant," I say in a fake posh accent, "before I was rudely interrupted by you, I was headed towards my locker. So if you would let me pass by you without further trouble?"

He bowed, stepping aside to allow my past. I sighed when I thought I was finally out of earshot, my heart was racing at top speeds during that conversation. It felt all so natural, but at the same time nerve-wracking. My relief, though, was short-lived when I turned and saw the object of my internal anguish there walking right behind me, so casually. I let out a confused noise and question him, "Why are you following me?" 

He smiles and proudly replies, "I am following you, Your Majesty, to assure you get to your locker peacefully as today is a special day where you deserve to be spoiled with servants." I giggle to myself, he's such a dork, that's why I lo- like him so much. He likes to make me laugh and I like how he tries so hard just for the smallest of smiles. 

"Alright, I'll let you follow me to my locker but not to class. Capiche?" 

Beaming, he gives a determined nod of the head, "Capiche."

Shaking my head, I return my gaze to the floor ahead of me. A small grin that I wanted to keep secret from him. I'm so thankful to have this man in my life. I am so incredibly thankful that he's still here with me and that he likes my presence. I am very grateful that he is still the dork I knew since we were kids. I am thankful for many parts of him that make him whole because he played a great part in making me who I am today. And I don't ever want to take that for granted again.


End file.
